It was true. Reggie had wanted to hide out in the school for years. It had started one day when they were sitting together under the slide at recess eating candy from a paper bag, the chill of an early autumn snaking down their backs, and Reggie saw smoke coughing from a school chimney.
“I never noticed a chimney,” he said.
A few days later, while the class single-filed to the art room, Reggie overheard a conversation about the teachers’ lounge.
“I never knew there was a lounge,” he said.
The following week at lunch Reggie paused to get an earful of a custodian’s exchange with a teacher. The custodian was holding a box full of props left over from a Columbus Day play the fourth graders had performed for the school. Moments later, Reggie slid his tray down between James and Willie, his eyes shifting and lit.
“Somewhere in this school is a costume room,” he said.
Soon Reggie had sketched an impressive mental map of an alternate Polk Elementary, one with secret passageways and underworld chambers. Wouldn’t it be cool, Reggie said on repeated occasions, to hide somewhere inside the school, wait until all the teachers and custodians had gone home, and then go exploring in the night? They could scream and yell as loud as they wanted. They could read private student records. They could bounce kickballs off the principal’s door. They could roller-skate.
It was summer, of course, and school was out. But that didn’t stop Reggie. Last year he had neglected to hand in dozens of assignments and was forced to suffer summer school, a strange daily ritual that Reggie described to his two friends as “just like normal school, except hardly anyone’s there, and you can get as many questions wrong as you want because the teacher just wants to go home.” Summer school had lasted for six weeks and, though Reggie had hated it, it had given him deeper insight into teachers. “Teachers are just like us,” he explained. “They hate school, too.”
Neither James nor Willie hated school, but they’d nodded anyway. It was better not to get in Reggie’s way when he was caught up in one of his schemes. If you did, he was likely to turn against you, attack you for being too wimpy, a little girl unworthy of being included in his plan. He might hate you for days, even weeks. So James played along, but reflected how strange it was that Reggie was finally excited about school, only now for all the wrong reasons.
With a vigor he never applied to his schoolwork, Reggie compiled a long, detailed catalog of all of the gear they’d need to bring along. Four flashlights (an extra in case one broke), extra batteries, a camera, two rolls of film, a notebook, pencils, snacks, soda pop, a blanket, a baseball, roller skates, a Frisbee, four or five books they could use to prop open doors (so they didn’t get locked inside), and a marker just in case they wanted to leave any mysterious messages inside the desks of any teachers—just to drive them nuts.
“It’s going to be a little tricky,” he admitted, “because we’re not even supposed to be there. So step one is we’re going to have to sneak in.”
They would use their usual alibi. Willie would tell his parents he was sleeping over at James’s house. James would tell his parents he was sleeping over at Willie’s. Reggie, whose mother worked too late to chaperone any sleepovers, claimed he could do whatever he pleased, and whenever, and so had no use for their lies.
Willie and James were roped into the plan before they had a chance to protest. When James saw that Reggie had already spent his meager allowance on spare batteries, he got that sick feeling in his gut again. This was really happening. If they were caught for trespassing, could they be expelled? Or even arrested? James didn’t know, but his stomach roiled when he thought of disobeying his parents. As exciting as Reggie’s plans were, he knew full well that they were part of the hole, not the donut. There was still one hope: it was conceivable that Willie’s parents wouldn’t permit Willie to sleep over, and James was counting on this to disrupt Reggie’s plan. Unfortunately, Willie’s parents thought it would be rude to turn down James Wahl’s invitation—the Wahls were so respected, after all, and they had such a big, pretty house. In fact, Mrs. Van Allen was sewing shut the left arm of a pair of Willie’s pajamas especially for the occasion.
“We’ll ditch your pj’s on the way,” said Reggie impatiently.
Naturally they would have to break the brand-new curfew. For some reason this detail went unspoken among the three friends, though it haunted James. Such concerns did not touch Reggie: he chewed his fingernails, swiped away pink eraser particles, and revised his two-page inventory with a stubby pencil clamped between his knuckles. Frowning, he crossed off “roller skates.”
The plan was set for Friday. That way, when Saturday morning arrived, the school would be deserted and they could just crawl out a window, feel the warm summer sun heat their necks, and smile in the knowledge that they had just pulled a fast one—on their parents, their school, the curfew-makers, the hit-and-run driver, everyone.
“If this is our last summer,” Reggie reminded them, “I don’t want to die without knowing what’s behind all those doors.”
* * *
Late Friday afternoon, James walked to the Van Allen house to pick up Willie, as always keeping an eye on every truck that rumbled down every side street. When he got there the sky was orange. The deserted tree house towered over him as he climbed the front stairs. James looked at it, saw branches move, heard boards whine.
“That tree house has got to go.”
James jumped. Mr. Van Allen was standing on the other side of the screen door, also gazing up at the tree. James felt his heart pound; he had not yet knocked. Mr. Van Allen said nothing and inspected the tree house, perhaps remembering when he’d built it: the coarse feel of the two-by-fours, the temperature of a nail after being struck by a hammer. James glanced at Mr. Van Allen’s hands. Thick curly hair swallowed up a giant class ring. The fingernails were notched and dirty. The hand gripped a beer can but had forgotten it—it tipped precariously and James tensed, waiting for liquid to start dribbling.
“How are you, James?” It was said so quietly, James thought he might have imagined it.
“Fine?” James answered.
Mr. Van Allen nodded vaguely, his eyes still searching the tree house lumber.
“You know I love you boys,” he whispered.
James held his breath and watched beer gather at the rim of the can.
“You know that. I know you know that.” Mr. Van Allen drew a long breath, jutting out his bottom jaw in an apparent attempt to summon strength. “We all make mistakes, James. Every one of us. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t love.”
After a while Mr. Van Allen glanced at James with vacant eyes. An instant later, he walked away. James stood there, his chest thumping, his neck sweating. What was he supposed to do now?
From somewhere inside the house, Mr. Van Allen’s voice: “Willie. Friend’s here.”
Moments later, Mrs. Van Allen let James in, crying, “Well, hello there, stranger!” She came up next to him, taking hold of his shoulder and bouncing her hip against his side, her other arm searching for an opportunity to hug but dangling loose when James made none available. Mrs. Van Allen was a heavy woman with silver hair lopped short. She wore jewelry and makeup, and plenty of both. In years prior, James had thought this decoration made her glamorous, but not anymore. Her cheeks were caked with a substance tan and muddy, and her eyelashes were gloppy with something black and wet. Her mouth was bright red, but the paint went a little past her lips, coloring the surrounding skin so she looked like a clown. In the days since Willie’s accident, she was simply too much—too bright, too happy, too forceful, too talkative.
“Come in, come in. How nice to see you! How are your mother and father? Will you tell them hello for me? They’re such wonderful people, Mr. and Mrs. Wahl.”
“They’re fine.”
“Oh, how wonderful!” she cried, before James had even finished responding. James glanced over at Mr. Van Allen, who now sat at the kitchen table, his back to them, clutching that sweaty beer in that hairy fist. James got the feeling Mrs. Van Allen carried on conversations only to somehow please her husband. It did not seem to be working. A newspaper lay dissected before Willie’s father. Certain portions of the print were circled in ink. The only sound was the frustrated ticking of an electric fan. There was a foul smell in the air, like turned meat.
“Hi, James!”
Willie stomped down the hall, an engorged backpack swinging from his good shoulder. Suddenly he lost equilibrium and dipped, his one arm flapping like a stricken bird, before righting himself and laughing. James watched his friend struggle against gravity every day, but it was particularly troubling that something as unthreatening as a backpack could take Willie down.
“William, you have your special pj’s?”
“Yes, Momma.”
“And you have your toothbrush? You make sure to scrub those braces.”
“Yes, Momma.”
“And you’re sure you don’t want to take … your bear?”
Everyone knew that Willie’s teddy bear was named Softie, but evidently Mrs. Van Allen was trying not to embarrass him. James scowled at her—she never should’ve mentioned Softie at all. This feeling was followed by frustration at Willie for still having the damn bear in the first place, which is exactly what Reggie had been saying for the last couple years: it was embarrassing, a kid his age.
“No, Momma,” Willie said, his ears going red.
“Okay, then, mister. Go kiss your daddy goodbye.”
Willie glanced at James, then dutifully scuffed his way across the cluttered living room floor—it didn’t used to be this cluttered, James observed—and stood next to his father. It was a ritual James had seen a thousand times, one he was glad he didn’t have to perform himself: the parting kisses to Mommy and Daddy. Only this time Willie hesitated, just for a second, and James noticed a passing look on Willie’s face like he was about to put his lips to something revolting. The fan ticked and Willie’s hair swirled.
“Bye, Dad,” Willie said, pecking him fast on the cheek. Mr. Van Allen did not stir.
“Willie loves his daddy,” said Mrs. Van Allen, grinning down at James. There was a smudge of red lipstick on her teeth as if she had bit into something alive. But when she hugged Willie and kissed him on the ear, the too much of Mrs. Van Allen went away and James saw only goodness: her eyes and how tightly they were wrinkled shut, how her swaying arm muscles clenched in the intensity of the embrace, how she ruined her hairdo against Willie without worrying in the slightest.
Willie broke away and called out one more goodbye, and then they were outside. When the two of them were past the tree house, down the drive, and onto the sidewalk, James threw one more peek over his shoulder. Mrs. Van Allen was still standing at the door, grinning and waving, but she was looking the wrong way, bidding goodbye to no one.
* * *
Just before five the three boys stood flat like burglars against a brick wall, behind the bushes. The school doors were not yet locked—the withdrawn bolts were visible even from this distance—and so they continued to wait, and pant, and blink away the sweat. They fixed themselves for an unbearable length of time, motionless in the very spot where they usually ran, silent where they usually shouted, waiting for some signal apparently recognizable to Reggie only.
At last it happened: Reggie drew breath, nodded, extricated his skin from the wall, and moved.
“Act like we’re supposed to be here,” he said. He lowered his head and moved like a bull. Seeing him so heedless of peril filled James with sudden courage. He slipped through the door first and Willie scampered in behind, thumping his backpack on the doorframe and once more nearly taking a dive. As usual, Reggie came last, and he took a moment to ensure the door made no sound when closing.
The school’s primary hallway was not the familiar orchestra of noise to which they were accustomed. Now it was the open throat of a sleeping beast. After not even ten feet, all three boys stopped. For several seconds their footsteps continued to crash off hard surfaces. They stared down the empty distance, unwilling to turn to one another and recognize that frozen look of fright. They held their breath. The silence roared. Finally, they heard faraway thuds.
“Custodians,” whispered Reggie.
They moved. When they came to the elbow in the hallway, Reggie held a finger to his lips and moved off to the side. At his signal, all three boys dropped to a knee and removed their shoes, tied the laces together and swung them over their shoulders. When they stood, Willie’s knot didn’t hold and his shoes hit the floor. James winced. Reggie glowered. Willie grinned in embarrassment, angering Reggie even more, and tried again to tie his laces. It was impossible to do well with one hand, so James leaned over and finished the job.
When they passed the unsecured locker that used to belong to Greg Johnson, Reggie opened it slowly and together they faced a black emptiness that went on forever.
They reached the milk room, a small chamber near the cafeteria with a warped wooden door that hadn’t shut properly in years. Inside was a large unlocked cooler that contained hundreds of identical pink milk cartons. Reggie removed three cartons of 2 percent, passed them out, then set about quietly arranging and stacking dozens of empty milk crates that the boys could hide behind. Then they sat together on the frigid cement, sipping their milk, ears pricked for the stray rumbling of a janitor’s mop bucket. The cooler hiccupped and purred. Soon their teeth were chattering.
“It’s freezing,” whispered Willie.
“Shut up,” said Reggie.
They held their breath when keys jangled past the milk room. A few minutes after that, they heard metal clangings. Then more of the same, only farther away. After that, there was no sound beyond the cooler and the careful breathing of the three boys.
“Okay,” said Reggie.
They tiptoed out into the hallway. The lights were out. Sunset’s glow spread through far-off windows and glared off the tile. They wandered in small circles, blood pounding through their ears.
“HEY!”
James leaped. Willie yelped. They both looked at Reggie, who watched their terrified reactions in delight, his rib cage expanding and collapsing.
Willie joined in. “HEY, YOU, BUSTER!”
And they continued that way for a while, forcing noise, any kind, into the immeasurable silence.
* * *
It did not last. Soon the boys moved as if through a church, quiet and reverent, afraid to put their hands to anything.
They entered the gymnasium, which tripled as the lunchroom and auditorium. The boys craned their necks to peer into the vast open space. It was dark and deep and swimming with dead lamps and dormant basketball hoops. The boys shifted their eyes away and hurried on. The floorboards complained.
The science lab was locked. They squashed their noses against the glass. Inside, the multiple sinks gleamed in the moonlight. The boys looked toward the case that contained dead beetles, spiders, and butterflies, each stabbed with little colored pins advertising their different parts, but it was too dark to see any bugs. Were they still there? Willie started looking at the ground and instantly the other two boys froze in place.
What if the bugs escaped at night and crawled beneath the door?
“I smell meat, I smell meat,” Willie mumbled. The other boys laughed nervously. After a moment, Willie realized what he had said and laughed too.
A few years ago, Willie had discovered how to memorize schoolwork. All you had to do was make up an unusual sentence that had the same first letters as what you were trying to memorize. For example, in science class—in this very room they were peeking into—Mr. Sharp made them memorize the three different kinds of rocks: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic, I-S-M. So Willie invented the phrase “I Smell Meat” to help him remember.
It didn’t stop there. In Ms. Janney’s social studies class, they had to memorize the first seven presidents. “Where All Jokers Must Make a Jump” stood for Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams (John Quincy), and Jackson. Even Reggie still remembered the presidents, and once recited all seven in proper sequence to evade punishment from the principal. James too had benefited from Willie’s talent, and felt pride when he saw other kids mouthing the bizarre sentences during tests.
“Kids (Poor Creatures) Often Fight Good Sense” stood for the different levels of the animal world: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. “Everyone Just Leaves” stood for the three branches of government: executive, judicial, and legislative. The system worked. How else was a kid supposed to remember Precambrian-Paleozoic-Mesozoic-Cenozoic or Dopey-Bashful-Grumpy-Doc-Happy-Sneezy-Sleepy or LCDM, the ascending Roman numerals? He might be shy and small and have bad teeth, a long nose, a neck scar, and only one arm, but nobody could get you through a tough exam like Willie Van Allen.
There was only one problem. His sentences outlasted their usefulness. Willie repeated them so often they became as natural as breathing and as accessible as the alphabet. If you listened, you could hear him murmuring them softly when it was his turn to bat or when Mel Herman wandered too close, smacking gum.
Student artwork lined the hallway leading to the art room. The boys ran their flashlights over each work, exclaiming when they found one of their own. It was fun enough. Eventually one of them noticed that there were several pictures missing. According to alphabetical placement, these spaces had once been claimed by Greg Johnson. Someone had taken his artwork, just like they had taken the contents of his locker, and it was as if he never existed.
“Guys, look at this,” said Reggie.
They all gathered around a watercolor painting. It was a swirl of garish color: red, purple, orange, and green, with razor slices of yellow. James and Willie stared for a minute but there was nothing substantial to find within the mess, just haunted outlines and unsettling shapes.
Reggie’s flashlight found the signature in the corner, scraped in reluctant pencil: MEL HERMAN.
“Figures,” he said.
Mel Herman was a mean kid. He was bigger than his classmates, and it was speculated that he had once been held back a grade, maybe even two or three. He sat in the back of class, slumped deep down in his desk. Teachers were always telling him to stop looking out the window and pay attention.
Here was the strange thing. All the teachers seemed to like Mel Herman. Maybe this was because he always did well on tests even though he never studied. He could do an entire page of math problems before most kids could finish one or two. You could always tell when Mel finished, because he would snap his pencil in two, sigh loudly, cross his arms, and stare out the window like he’d do almost anything to be set free.
Mel’s grimy hair tangled around his ears. He wore thick glasses that were always taped in the corners. He wore the same too-big black shirt day after day. One kid swore Mel used to have a paper route but was fired when he attacked an adult who refused to pay. Another kid said that Mel didn’t have any parents and survived at home all alone. Still another claimed Mel had once had an older brother, but that he’d died in a shoot-out—either that or was in the slammer serving fifty-to-life. Maybe that was why the teachers liked Mel Herman so much, maybe they just felt sorry for him.
But James and Reggie didn’t feel sorry for him. They hated him. Mel didn’t have any friends and didn’t deserve any. He always showed up to junkball at the same time they did, like he’d been circling the abandoned vehicles all morning. He was the best hitter around—he hit a home run almost every single time he swung—but still nobody wanted Mel Herman on their team, because if you screwed up, he’d go crazy. He’d yell and scream until his face grew red and his nose dripped snot. Sometimes he’d push you over and rage above you with his hands in fists. Fortunately, instead of trouncing you, he’d usually just invent some bad words and pace around the outfield. In the meantime the game halted, and all the players stood around swatting mosquitoes and wishing they were somewhere else.
It wasn’t just the diamond. Without notice, Mel Herman showed up everywhere, all the time, a big black mark that marred any scene he entered. Playgrounds: there he was, shuffling past the jungle gym. The library: he’s there, moving among the cold, still stacks. The streets: at the end of every single block, around each corner. Despite the fear and unease he struck in smaller boys everywhere, he moved about the town virtually un noticed by grown-ups, possibly because he was neither small enough (a lost toddler) nor big enough (a delinquent high schooler) to raise alarm. Grown-ups, of course, were mistaken. This skulking black-clad figure, this mysterious Mel Herman, was a menace, always in motion, always a danger, and always unwelcome.
Mel was also the best artist in school by a mile, although he seemed to hate art class as much as any other. Usually he would paint pictures so overwhelming that they were impossible to appraise beyond their scope and size. There were no rainbows in his artwork, no cats or dogs, no figures holding hands, nothing painted in brushstrokes applied with anything less than murderous force. Mel worked in great, wet, purposeful patterns constructed with a brutal confidence; these formations often paired themselves with details so fine they hurt the eye-even with his artwork, Mel Herman terrorized. Now and then an art teacher would risk offering praise for one of these fanatical images, to which Mel would only stare back, his thick face ripening with disgust.
Other times, mostly in earlier grades, Mel would dash off something awesome—a salivating dinosaur, or a disintegrating vampire, or a guitar flying through the air on Pegasus wings—but then, before showing it to the teacher, he’d tear it to pieces. When the teacher asked him why he hadn’t done the assignment, he’d just shrug and say, “The assignment was stupid.” Then his eyes would spark behind his dirty glasses and he’d wipe his nose with the back of his sleeve, and all the other kids would busy themselves with their drawings so he didn’t catch them watching.
The best Reggie and James could figure, Mel just liked trouble. Saturated in light, isolated from the primitive sixth-grade doodles surrounding it, his painting was as breathtaking as his unannounced arrival at the junkball field. As scary as it was, the painting was truer than anything that anyone at school had ever said, because it came directly from Mel’s brain, completely un-contaminated by fears of bad grades, detention, or ridicule. It was as honest as someone spitting in your face.
“Guys.”
Reggie’s voice was severe. James’s and Willie’s lights twirled madly across the walls. It was another Mel Herman masterpiece, and this one was huge: four strips of brown paper had been hastily stapled to create a massive, disorderly canvas, and even at this size the activity spilled off all four edges. It looked like a road map drafted by a lunatic. The entire surface was etched with minuscule people, animals, landscapes, and loosely geometric patterns. It was pencil, crayon, paint, and marker, and all mixed together in every possible color. There was even a splotch that just had to be dried ketchup. All the same, James didn’t know why Reggie’s face was so grim.
“Look,” Reggie hissed, jabbing a finger at the picture’s bottom left corner. The boys pressed forward. Willie’s long nose nearly touched the paint.
James saw a squiggle of lines. Willie’s eyes traced the same squiggle. Then Reggie breathed the word “truck” and the suggestion instantly aligned their vision, snared their breath, beat together their hearts, because secretly they were all dying to find exactly what they had found.
It was a tiny drawing of tiny vehicle running over a tiny person. It was a detail so small probably no one had ever noticed it before. Yet there it was.
The boys pointed flashlights into each other’s faces. Their skin burned pallid and their eyes became reflecting pennies, their mouths gaping black holes. Willie closed his eyes to block the light and for a second looked like Greg Johnson in his casket, tranquil and colorless.
James tapped Willie’s good shoulder with his flashlight until Willie cracked open an eye.
“Do you think … ?” James whispered.
“Get that flashlight outta my eyes,” Willie said.
“But why would he do it?” said James.
“Why are you trying to blind me?” said Willie.
“Wait a minute, no,” James said, shaking his head. “Mel Herman can’t drive.”
“Why not?” shouted Reggie. His face was grave but his eyes glinted. “He’s big enough to drive a truck. Smart enough, too, I bet.”
“Maybe his dad drives it,” suggested Willie.
The bottom of James’s stomach fell away. This was too plausible.
“I thought he didn’t have a dad,” James said hopefully.
“That’s the thing, nobody knows,” said Reggie. James could tell he was thrilled to unearth a new reason to hate Mel Herman, and instantly James felt Reggie pushing this reason on him and Willie, pressuring them to accept it. “Nobody knows squat about him. He wears the same clothes every day. He walks to school from who knows where. Hell, he walks everywhere and watches everyone and knows exactly what everyone is up to. And he shows up for junkball out of nowhere?”
The implication was haunting. If Mel Herman followed kids to the junkyard, might he follow kids away from the junkyard as well? Might he do it in a truck?
Reggie leapt and in a single motion ripped the large painting from the wall. When he folded it into quarters and stuffed it inside his backpack, he moved with the curt motions of one handling something dead.
They did not stay the night. Around midnight, the boys wiggled out a classroom window, and when they walked away from the school they did it swiftly and did not look back.